


Summerstorm

by Lykotheia



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Drabble, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-10-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 04:16:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lykotheia/pseuds/Lykotheia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A drabble I wrote awhile back set post-Avengers film. Thor visits Loki in his (not so elegant as the movie-verse) prison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summerstorm

Thunder grumbled in the distance, muted by twenty feet of stone and earth and the scuffle and clash of boots and armor of the guards lazing nearby. It made him sit up straighter, strain to hear the familiar cacophony of the storm. The hiss of rain and staccato hiss of snapping hail did not filter through his prison walls, nor even the faintest glimmer of lightning, though by the timbre of the echoing thunder he imagined it must be quite bright. Everything within was dark and dank and pleasantly chilly, enough that it made the skin clammy and drew out an icy sweat after only a short exposure. He liked it mostly because it kept his jailers at bay; they came in with food, with water that froze over, and despite yards of impenetrable, enchanted chain that corded about his arms and legs and mouth, they skirted the perimeters of his cell. He could hear them murmur to one another the same way he heard the rolling thunder now, only distantly, but picked up on the exposed nerves in their tones and delighted in it. Even bound almost beyond movement, they were still afraid of him. They were still afraid of Loki.

_Good._

What was once a torture, this restrictive silence, soon became a haven for his thoughts, what the Metal Man had once poetically called the most fecund earth for madness. The man had a clever vocabulary, but very little skill at wielding it. He would have made a pleasant-shaped stain on the pavement, but like a gnat, the irksome fellow could fly.

Outside of the steel-wrapped and talisman-cloaked door, he heard movement again, the uncertain slide of boots on stone. What were they doing, drawing lots? It brought a wicked grin to his face, or so he supposed. Really he had no idea what he looked like anymore, whether it was fiendishly intimidating or desiccated and defeated. Perhaps a mixture, but it couldn’t be too much of the latter, given the constant hesitation of Asgard’s finest men to approach him in bonds. This they did once a fortnight, only to remove the ferric-tasting bit so that food, water, and fresh air might pass his lips. And then, even more infrequently, a touch. 

He thought the cruelest punishment was not the unending pitch of night—he liked the shadows—or the maddening silence—it was easier to think—but that the only sport they allowed him, the only communication, if one might call it that, was with the man whom he blamed above all for his incarceration. The man who, by the sound of the roiling storm outside, was in a foul temper and voicing it. If it weren’t for the source, Loki thought, he might have a certain fondness for storms. 

The tear of metal on metal ripped through the quiet of the room, and sparks flew near the base of the door as it was forced open and armored guards pushed through the partition. He blinked benignly at them, having discovered that, above all, unnerved them most, and sat quite still while they unfettered his bruised throat to get to the clasp of the bit. It came out with a sick, wet sound, and Loki could taste fresh blood where it had cut deep lines into the sides of his mouth. They would heal before it was placed back again, and then reform within the night. It was an endurable ache, more tolerable than the boredom.  
One man forced his head back, gripping the hair with greater might than was necessary, and the other finished unlocking the heavy links that rested at his collar. They loosened the bindings about his arms just enough that he might move them, though not himself, and grasp at the flask of watered down wine. Loki could go a longer time without sustenance, but preferred not to; it was uncomfortable, painful at length, and sometimes made his thoughts swim in the same disordered way he imagined his captors’ did. 

While he ate, they were uneasy, watching soundlessly and avoiding sound or movement outside of the flickering of their torches, lest they draw his attention. One he had known from his life Before—it was a friend of Thor’s who had thrown him at practice in their youth, a beast of a man who wielded a battle-axe the way some flung a mace about. The other was slighter, younger, and Loki did not recall having seen him before. His terror was more abject, though to his credit he handled it well, and his hands were still on their weapon. While their trepidation was flattering, it might have been more so if it were warranted. Looking up to them when he had finished, he drained the flask so that the red tint of the grape left his lips, he imagined, a ghastly hue, and smiled. “I cannot imagine the source of your anxiety.” Oh, his voice rasped like a serpent’s after so long at rest, like an unstrung bow with its horns bending anew. “If I were at all in good vigor, you would already be dead.” Seeing the older of the two stare back emotionlessly, he glanced at the younger, who blinked too fast, too hard. “And messily.” 

“ _Loki_.” Thunder rumbled nearer this time, and Thor strode in, jaw clenched tightly, arms folded as he took on a disdainful expression that Loki believed he might have taught him. 

“Dismissed,” he said to the guards, the younger of whom looked momentarily grateful. 

“To what do I owe this dubious honor?” Loki husked, fingers running over the skin of the flask once again, realizing he was still thirsty, but could summon nothing. None of his magic worked beneath the force of the chains; Odin had seen to that. 

“To your lacking manners.”

“Forgive me. I would doff my hat, but I’m a little chained to the wall.” 

“That isn’t what I mean,” Thor growled, sliding the door shut with a great crash that shook the cell. It was dark again, blindingly, and he lit a torch hooked into the wall, making it flame up and light the shadows on the opposite side of his face. He hadn’t come in over a month, but Loki registered the little scar at the corner of his lips was new. Perhaps some unlucky wench had finally swiped his fumbling advances straight from his mouth. The thought made Loki smile, and brought a confused, blustering exhalation from his—Thor. 

“This is not permanent, or need not be, if you would only resign yourself to civility.”

“Well I can hardly think of a better way to impart civility than abuse and starvation,” Loki said nonchalantly, listening as the thunder outside grew fiercer in response to Thor’s rising ire. 

“You have proven yourself a danger--”

“Let us not rehearse the same song, Odinson. I heard enough of your thoughts in that bungled ode you call a defense speech.”

Thor colored in anger and flexed his hand, but Loki saw he couldn’t yet bring himself to strike an unarmed man. That was unfortunate; he would rather like it if he did. Thor’s conscience was of a unique disposition, and he would see to it that the bruise did not heal, knowing what it would do to him to see it each time he paid the wayward, challenged spare heir a sympathy visit. 

“Did you have a purpose this time?” Loki inquired, feeling his throat stretch pleasantly as he became accustomed to speech, his tongue sloughing off fourteen days’ of laziness. Each time he ate, Thor would come in, often to exchange nothing more than curt civilities and assuage that guilty conscience of his. On occasion he spoke at length—fifteen or twenty minutes of length, at least—but he never lingered long. 

“I did, but now is not the occasion after all.” He sounded disappointed, and Loki racked his memory, traipsing through the tidy files there and mentally thumbing one in particular. At this, his mouth stretched in a grin, and he saw Thor’s pulse throb at the small of his throat, recognizing. 

“Oh now,” he fleered. “Such sentimentality. You embarrass yourself. At least the first time you’d had enough of a spine not to invent such foolish pretexts.”

“It is no pretext—and what first time?” He brushed his hand against the base of the torch before leaving it there and approaching his prisoner, gently unwinding another wrap of chain from the X it formed at his chest. He was still quite immobile, but less burdened. “It was only a kiss, Loki. And I should think the explanation quite obvious.”

“You’re nothing if not that.” Loki agreed, and when he glanced aside, a rough hand was in his hair, jerking his head back to bare his throat, which a calloused hand quickly cupped along the side, fingertips coming up behind the shell of his ear. He forced green eyes to meet his. 

“Because it is not good for you to go so long without contact. I still see you as my brother, and it is to remind you of that that I come.”

Loki leaned his cheek into a wide palm for just a moment, watching the way Thor’s expression softened almost instantly in response, and then leered. “Oh it’s for my good, is it? How magnanimous.”

“It is!” Thor protested, “I know you well enough not to frequent this place; you will drag me down with you, into your madness. I would rather draw you up gradually into the light.”

Loki snorted at that bit of poetic nonsense, watching his hand pull away. “You oblige only yourself, allaying that warped sense of honor of yours.”

“I would oblige you,” Thor offered at once, glancing down reluctantly at the chains. “Within reason.”

“Would you?” Loki mused aloud, clicking his tongue in thought. 

“You act as though you’ve been denied.” Thor pointed out, “But you’ve never asked for anything, Loki.”

Was that it then? He wanted to see him humble himself, asking for something petty and humiliating to expose his weakened state? Perhaps not. Thor was stupidly optimistic, maybe he thought Loki would ask to be obliged in an altogether different way. 

“The storm.” He said finally. “I wish to see it.”

Thor frowned, running a hand over the scruff of fair beard at his jaw. “The storm is outside, Loki,” he said gently. “And I cannot control you that well.”

“No, you can’t,” the prisoner agreed in dulcet tones, “and the storm is in here.”

Thor’s mouth quirked upward a bit at the revelation, lowering himself onto the granite outcropping beside his brother and nudged another layer of chain off, baring most of him to the air, though his hands were still held fast with only two feet of slack, and his feet tightly bound. Raising a wrist, he let his fingertips flick out, making lightning dance across the walls of the room and a drizzle of icy rain fall onto the flagstones. The roar outside faded away, and a subdued cannonade filled the room, a whirlwind of sound in the vacuum of silence. When the guards scratched at the door in alarm, their voices booming over the small tumult of the storm, Thor answered them something formal and rose, the flickering lines of electricity tapering off at once. 

Loki drew back when his hand extended forth, touching the red lines the bit left about his mouth and the scarlet smear of his lower lip, vermillion from the wine. “Perhaps not a fortnight, this time.” He sounded as though he were requesting permission, and then, one foot out the door, gave him a visual nudge, making Loki realize he could taste the ozone from his fingertips. 

“Ask, Loki.” Leaving the jailers to bind him up again and seal his mouth, he departed, taking his light with him. 

 

-Telos-


End file.
